Here's the situation: I went down home for thanksgiving so i'm working out at a different gym. It quickly became apparent to me how working out at the same gym can make things a lot easier for certain exercises to progress on.

The smith here is obviously counterweighted differently than the one I used up at my university because the weights I was expecting to hit were muuuch to heavy for the rep range, and the worst part is that the smith was very old and obviously worn, and didn't have a sticker on it that says how it is counterweighted (if at all) so it's not like i could make an accurate adjustment. Also, it turns out my gym here lost their dip belt, and haven't replaced it, so the weighted dips went out the window. This is what wound up happening.

Post workout notes: Because of the nature of the triceps exercise, I put off stretching chest till after dips. The only reason why I was able to set PRs in the BTN Smith Overhead Press is because I decided before this workout that I wanted to restrict the range of motion on my shoulders to just below halfway where it because more triceps.

All my shoulder rotation exercises are presses so I wanted to leave my triceps fresh. So the smith here was different, heavier, but I technically set PRs because the previous rotation I went full ROM with the shoulder press.

Well weighted dips were out, so i used the dip machine, but this gets weird because the weight I can use is heavy enough that I can't get all the way down to the seat even when I put all my weight on it, so that was weird, and might've been the reason why I obviously didn't reach true muscular failure on the first set since I only had to drop 10 pounds to get my second set quota.

Pullups, I'm just going to do bodyweight from now on and have them progress by adding reps, because I'm heavier now than I was last rotation and it'll make progress strange any other way due to weight fluctuation.

The highlight of the workout was drag rack deads where I broke PRs quite well.

Previous bests were 275pdx8, 245pdx10

This time I went 295pdx8, 255pdx13r

Hanging weighted stretches were out the window without a dip belt, so I just stretched while pulling on a power rack, and did a very low good morning for my lower back stretch.

My next workout will be affected because my gym will be closed on thanksgiving, and it's planned on thursday, but i might drive around to find another gym that is hopefully open. It might be alittle different because I have smith front squats, but oh well, we'll see.

Just played Left 4 Dead today, pretty good game to play with friends, but it has absolutely nooo story. It gets old pretty quick because of that. You just go from safe room to safe room repetitively killing, as fun as that is, without any storyline or intrigue. Something just to rent and have fun with.

But I also tried out Mirror's Edge on 360, now thaaaat's an addicting game. The fact that I used to do a bit of freerunning before, brought me to this game, but it is just fun as hell to play. Flowing is an art in real life, in the game where the character is superhuman in ability and courage, it becomes ridiculous. The fighting is hard, but it's realistic. Going up against SWAT team members with your fists and them with their guns should be difficult.

I also bought a psychology book today, planning on perhaps finishing it before thanksgiving's over, I don't have it right in front of me but it's basically about Darwinism and the evolution of moral tendencies.

I think I found a Smith close to the one I have back at my home gym, so I played safe to try it out.

I went for a 10pd PR if it was the same, if it was counterweighted less, it would be, technically, a larger PR and much more difficult to do. I think it's the same because I was able to get the same reps with a fairly hard set, not completely all out, so in context it looks good, because normally I would've tried for a 20pd PR, rep or death.

I'm going to have to use this gym when I come down for Christmas vacation, so it's looking good that I found a similar Smith machine...but I still have that disadvantage without a dip belt for some exercise and stretches which sucks big time, but I guess I'll have to switch out Dips and Hanging Stretches.

DB bench Press got messed up, 2 things happened, I forgot instead of my standard 6-8 and 10-13 rep ranges, I want to have 10-13 15-18 for my db exercises so i upped the weight when i forgot. Well I wanted:

Another note is that in the previous workout, I had hamstrings before quads. Definitely a bad idea, after the SLDLs and the stretching, I was completely wasted for the quads, and i think stretching the hams, weakened them to a great degree which greatly affected the strength possible in the quad exercises.

All PRs, except for the first exercise, I overguessed a little bit and missed my rep range by 1. I don't know what happened on my last set of the day, I just found this second wind and totally slaughtered the rep range.

I realized on hyper extensions that I was bouncing too much, which would make progression suspect. So on the second set, I held a pause of 1-2 seconds at the bottom, so it was a much better set. Didn't make the rep range on hack sqauts but I was still able to get a PR on the widowmaker set. But overall, energy levels were pretty shitty for the day.

Came up short on the Incline Press, I seem to have real trouble setting PRs and hitting the rep ranges on my first exercise of the day, but it seems to be getting better. I think I just have to start getting used to getting into that rep-or-death frame of mind earlier in the workout, and also possibly work on my warm up.

I think it's an art, like meditation, that you have to work on to get better at getting into that mentality, but I seem to be able to get into it earlier and earlier with every workout.

The behind the neck presses are going to have to be switched out. Not only did they feel like total shit, but I couldn't get a single rep out. It just really felt like my shoulders were in a precarious position and my body didn't want to produce force for fear of fucking something up, so I'm going to switch them out for something else next time.

Pulled 3 plates for that rep range for the first time!! Man it felt good to be able to rep that out on the drag rack deads. Well, I mean it didn't feeel good, it felt like hell, but afterwards I felt a great feeling of accomplishment...and lightheadedness.

Gonna try to keep up with this again. Currently I'm trying to bring my squat up because I think it's pretty weak so I decided to come up with this plan where i'm squatting 3-4 times a week. It goes like this.

Push DaySquat (heavy) Then the rest of the push workout..

Pull DaySquat (moderate) Then the rest of pull workout..

Leg DaySquat (light) Then the rest of leg workout..

Heavy days are warm up sets then 3x1-4 repsMedium days are warm up sets then 3x6-10 repsLight days are warm up sets then 3x12-15 reps

My hamstrings were sore from yesterdays workout..bout the only thing that did get sore. If doing the sprints relieves the soreness and allows me to workout tomorrow, i'm definitely going to do them more often. If so, it will even more solidify my belief at how far off overtraining really is..